AGA lout

Now, you either love or loathe an aga.

Ours is absolutely ancient, possibly 50 years old. Yes you pay a fortune for one but you only buy one per lifetime!

Of course it's not like a normal cooker, ours was originally a coal / wood aga and converted to oil at some stage.

An aga works by having a small fire, hefty insulation and storing the heat in iron castings. Thats the theory.

Of course ours has stoped working, there is not a lot to go wrong. I feel that trying to run it on the contents of an empty oil tank was not one of my brighter ideas.

So this morning it was lift out a lot of hefty casting and clean everthing out before rebuilding it all.

Naturally I managed to whack one of the pipe joints which has been leaking oil but more importantlly sucking air and causing the aga to run all wrong.

Maybe the empty tank was not the problem at all.

But I digress, having first completly stripped the aga and cleaned it it has all gone back togehter and when it didn't work properly eagle eyed management spotted a dripping joint.

Now I have had a quick lie on the floor with tools from the fire engine renewing a joint so (hopefully) it won't leak and I can light it again without having to strip it all down again to clear away the soot.

It all seems to be working so far, and a stroke of luck. I arrived to light it in the nick of time. To light an aga you turn on the fuel and wait for it to prime before you light it.

Now if you try and light it too soon the oil is not there and you end up stuffing matches into the primer hole and possibly burning your fingers.

If you leave it too long, paraffin will have overflowed the burner. This in turn creates a pool on the chamber floor. Introduce a match and, well, it's great if don't want the bother of plucking your eyebrows and allways fancied your hair short and frizzled.......

R